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Dheeraj Sharma's avatar

Ilia, thank you for sharing such a detailed break down of these very essential concepts. The whole tutorial was very easy to follow and above wall very resonating and clear it reassured the understanding I also had for commands agents and skills. Luckily, I did not learn them from any tutorial rather, I discovered the Y and when while working with Claude code, and it helped me understand these differences and the needs, but now I read your article. It all comes together in my mind whatever I have been learning for the past one and a half month and it all makes sense so thank you.

Ilia Karelin's avatar

Perfect, that’s what we’re shooting for here Dheeraj!

Dr Sam Illingworth's avatar

Ilia this is one of the best breakdowns I have seen on this topic. I have to admit I often get confused between how commands and skills operate and this is a post I will keep coming back to. Please do one on writing effective Gems next!

Ilia Karelin's avatar

Appreciate it Sam! I might have to do some research and playing around with Gems before I write something about it!

Jeff Morhous's avatar

This is a great read! I think Claude Code has a positioning problem re; Commands/Skills/Agents - this is a good fieldguide to understanding the differences

Ilia Karelin's avatar

Yes! If you understand how to use any one of those, it’ll be like unlocking a powerful skill in a game lol

JP's avatar

Did the same breakdown for OpenCode recently, because the same confusion exists there. The concepts map across almost 1:1: commands are saved prompts, agents own the permission model, skills are knowledge agents can load on demand. The one difference is that OpenCode skills aren't user-invocable, they're agent-loaded only. Covered it here: https://blog.devgenius.io/no-commands-skills-and-agents-in-opencode-whats-the-difference-cf16c950b592